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"But the Turks," explained one important U.S. official recently. ". . . have tried to cram 50 years' progress into five; they just don't have the economic base to do it." In the midst of great accomplishment, troubles have bred like termites. In the pellmell rush of putting up factories, dredging ports, bulldozing roads, planting new crops, nobody found time or talent to coordinate and manage all the projects. Factories were located in one part of the country, the electric power to operate them in another. Sugar mills seemed to get built near voters, not beet fields. As soon as new cement plants got into production, their output poured off into the walls of speculative apartment houses in Istanbul instead of more urgently needed factory floors. When Turkey's huge new wheat crops poured to market, no facilities were there for cleaning the grain, and the wheat had to be downgraded for its impurities.
A Martini a Day
Pledged to maintain both a free economy and a breakneck pace of expansion, Turkey became more and more overextended. At home, Farmer Menderes staunchly refused (and still does) to extend the income tax to farmers, who represent 80% of the population and the bulk of Menderes' party's electoral support. The country exhausted its foreign-exchange reserves and ran up foreign debts, which continue to grow at the rate of $3,000,000 weekly. For months Turkey has been living hand-to-mouth, paying such urgent bills as last June's oil-company duns out of current earnings.
Shortages have grown worse. Chrome-mining firms cannot even get enough foreign exchange to buy dynamite; textile mills have closed because they cannot get funds to import wool tops and dyes. The sinking state of Turkey's credit has scared off foreign enterprisers who might otherwise have taken advantage of Menderes' generous terms for new oil and other foreign investors.
Last week the free-market rate of the Turkish lira sagged to nine to the dollar (the official rate: 2.8 to $1). The cost of living has been rising 30% a year for the last three years. Coffee is almost unobtainable. Hardships are greatest in the cities, where a laborer must work three days to buy a pair of shoes, and a tourist at the bar of the new Istanbul Hilton Hotel pays six liras—almost a workingman's entire one-day pay—for a martini.
Inflation and the lopsided boom have bred many millionaires. But Turkey's trouble has mostly bred deep discontent. It boiled viciously to the surface last month in the Istanbul and Izmir riots. They began, ironically, in what was almost certainly a government-inspired plan for demonstrations against Greece's claims to Cyprus (TIME, Oct. 3). But before the nasty surge was checked, it had swept beyond minorities, to strike at many Turks as well—a raging protest against high prices, low wages, and the sight of luxury in its midst. Trying to call off a mob from burning a Greek church, a Turkish woman lawyer, Surreya Agaoglu, shouted from her balcony that the marauders were endangering their own homes. "What have we to lose but a blanket and a pot?" came a harridan's screech from the mob. "You wait in your fine home. Your turn will come!" By then it was poor against rich.